AI News, Robots for Real: Surgeons and Robots Scrub Up

Robots for Real: Surgeons and Robots Scrub Up

Jim Handa: Three, three, two, two, three, four...oh, that's really useful, actually...okay...three, two, one, one...because if you knew exactly the force that's being generated and if you knew the force that would induce a hemorrhage or a tear to the tissue, then you have instantaneous information.

It is a part of a microsurgical workstation that combines robotics, sensing, and imaging to help the surgeon work on tissue that is so small the surgical manipulations can't even be felt by the human hand.

Jim Handa: I think there are some elements that make us excited about it because of the ability to use robotics and other instruments to go to different structures within the eye that we are currently unable to adequately operate on.

It could open up a whole new branch of eye surgery, which is part of the mission, according to center director Russ Taylor, who helped design one of the first surgical robots nearly 20 years ago.

Greg Hager: We think here that the real impact is when you put it together—when you provide sensing, visualization, information processing, and devices and tools that are all integrated into what we call a surgical workstation.

One of the robot's designers, mechanical engineer Louis Whitcomb, says it's a powerful combination because the MRI shows human tissue in unprecedented detail.

So, take the technology of robotics—robotics are very precise and they're like a machine tool, and if you can tell them exactly where to place the needle, they'll place it with millimeter accuracy.

As technology improves treatment capabilities and computers track the experiences, doctors can use the information to improve patient care, according to the center's director, Russ Taylor.

Rise of the Robots

PBS Airdate: February 24, 2016 NARRATOR: It's one of the most ambitious challenges in the history of technology:&hellip;

DENNIS HONG (Roboticist, UCLA): People see these humanoid robots developed in Japan, all these fancy things, and they had the expectation that, 'Oh, we have these robots, and they're going to, you know, save the world.'

PAUL OH (University of Nevada, Las Vegas): The real tragedy was if, simply, some valves could have been turned or some switches could have been flicked or hoses attached, a lot of the meltdown could have been prevented.

NARRATOR: In 2013, at a racetrack on the outskirts of Miami, DARPA, the research arm of the U.S. Department of Defense, challenged 16 teams from around the world to build rescue robots that can help save lives in a disaster.

Since then, the agency has spent billions developing military technology, advanced weaponry like stealth technology, drones and night vision.

NARRATOR: If these researchers succeed in creating rescue robots, the same technology could be used to develop robots that take care of the elderly, babysit our kids, clean up after us, robots in almost every facet of life.

With human operators controlling their every move, the robots must perform basic tasks, like opening a door.

RODNEY BROOKS (Rethink Robotics): Back in the early '50s, Alan Turing, one of the founders of artificial intelligence, said that the best thing we could do was build a robot with TV cameras for its eyes and rotors to drive its legs and have it romp around the countryside and learn from the real world.

So he said, let's leave that physical interaction until later, and let's work on more abstract problems, the intelligence abstract problems.

NARRATOR: The field of artificial intelligence, or A.I., has already built machines that beat us at chess, trade stocks with lightning speed, and search for anything we want, in an instant.

Some of the biggest problems robots face are things we humans usually take for granted, like mobility, manual dexterity and the ability to see and understand our environment.

So unless the robot is the shape and size of a human, it won't be able to navigate and move around in the environment designed for humans.

Machine Cognition, or I.H.M.C., one of the teams competing in the DARPA robotics challenge is hard at work, developing its own software to run this massive bot, named Atlas, a 385-pound powerhouse.

Several teams competing in the challenge are using this hardware but writing unique software to guide their robot.

NARRATOR: For team leader Jerry Pratt, finding the best way for a bipedal robot to walk has not been easy or quick.

Using nature as his guide, Jerry gave his bipeds hips, knees and ankles that mimicked how animals move.

This one, called 'spring flamingo,' had specially designed motors that worked a lot like muscles, varying the amount of power each joint used.

NARRATOR: When it came to designing a humanoid, he focused on developing the perfect combination of hardware and software that would enable his biped to stay upright as it calculates the best way to shift its center of mass, lift its leg, swing it forward, and put its foot back down in the right place and with just the right amount of pressure.

These lines of code are written in a programming language that resembles English, but for Atlas to use them, its onboard computer has a program that translates them into a language a machine can understand: zeros and ones.

It's the interplay of hardware and software that keeps this bot on its feet, an ability that took hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution to perfect.

At the very same time a series of fluid-filled canals in the inner ear, tells your brain the position and motion of your head, so you know which way is up.

And a kind of sixth sense, called 'proprioception' uses your muscles and nerves to detect where your arms and legs are, in relation to each other.

For eyes, the bot has a stereo camera and a couple of fisheye lenses sticking out the side of its head, along with a spinning laser, called LIDAR, that scans everything in the world around it and creates a 3D model of its environment.

JERRY PRATT: We only have a limited number of sensors on the robot, whereas with a human or an animal you have thousands of little force sensors on every square inch of your body.

NARRATOR: When the cousins return for the final challenge, they'll debut their humanoid, transformed with the help of some clever engineering.

To assist rescue workers in the real world, it needs hands with the kind of strength and dexterity it takes to lift heavy hoses, drill into walls, solder and saw.

SID SRINIVASA (Roboticist, Carnegie Mellon University): If you look at the way humans manipulate objects, we have this instinct for tactile sensing, for feeling the world.

NARRATOR: Is it possible to translate a masterpiece of evolution into motors, cables, sensors and thousands of lines of code?

On the outskirts of London, behind an unassuming storefront, a small group of robot enthusiasts are building a robotic hand that they hope could one day rival our own.

ARMANDO DE LA ROSA (Engineer, Shadow Robotics): When we first started building a hand, we actually bought anatomy books and tried to understand how the hand works.

Each motor has a temperature sensor, a current sensor and two full sensors, so we can tell how hard the motor is working and how hard it's driving the tendons.

ARMANDO DE LA ROSA: We have this hand handling pipettes and lab equipment, removing the human from the risk, for example, people that work with very, very nasty bacteria and viruses.

RICH WALKER: When you look at where robot hands get used, you find people who want to do something delicate and precise and people who want something big and rugged and solid.

So, if anybody's curious, Wilt Chamberlain's hand is very, very big, and not only is it very, very big, when you make a robotic version of it, it actually cannot deal with normal human-scale tools.

It grabbed everything&mdash;the human tools&mdash;so we thought we were in pretty good shape. NARRATOR: But then, at the first challenge, Robosimian had to open a door, and things got messy.

BRETT KENNEDY: So, here's an individual finger, and in that individual finger there is an artificial tendon, it's a synthetic fiber, when excessive forces happen, it snaps.

Many are using this gripper, designed with three fingers that can wrap around a variety of objects and even pick up something small.

CLÉMENT GOSSELIN (Roboticist, Laval University): If we look at tasks like, for instance, opening a door or using a drill, using hand tools and things, pretty much all these tasks you can perform using three fingers.

NARRATOR: Robotic grippers have already made their way onto the factory floor, attached to massive robotic arms that are as robust as they are precise.

They build cars, lift heavy boxes, pack beer, sort through anything and everything from batteries to pancakes, doing the kind of jobs many people consider repetitive and downright boring.

But some experts fear, as robots move beyond the factory into the real world, they'll take on a lot more.

NARRATOR: Today, more and more jobs require humans to work side by side with robots on the assembly line, programming them, and repairing them.

RON ARKIN (Georgia Institute of Technology): Much of the things that we are creating can be used for a whole broad range of potential applications, ranging from eldercare and childcare robots, to healthcare robotic platforms, even surrogate sex objects.

NARRATOR: What impact these high-tech machines will have in the workplace and our homes remains unclear, but one thing's for sure, robots are starting to take their first baby steps out of the lab and into the real world, learning how to manipulate objects we use every day.

But for a rescue robot to be truly useful, there's another hurdle researchers face, the toughest one of all: the challenge of giving a machine the ability to understand its environment, to give it a brain.

The instructions travel through an elaborate pipeline that connects every piece of hardware, every motor and sensor to a computer controlled by a team of human operators.

Using six different cameras, located on the front and back of its head, and a spinning sensor, called LIDAR, the bot sends data about its environment to the operators.

CLARK HAYES (Roboticist, Carnegie Mellon): Recognizing objects, that's a very hard problem in robotics, so we let the human tell the difference between a cat and a dog, a valve and a door.

But it would be impossibly slow and impractical for the operators to tell CHIMP how to move every joint, every sensor, every motor of its complex arm.

CLARK HAYES: As we move towards developing this technology further, we really want to push on the robot autonomy and let CHIMP do more things on its own, but we always want to keep this as a tool for a human.

RUSS TEDRAKE: Our goal as researchers, especially in this artificial intelligence lab, we want to solve the long-term research questions about how to make autonomous robots.

This is the closest we've ever come to building an artificial intelligence machine, where this humanoid robot is moving through the world, solving real problems.

To create a more autonomous robot, Tedrake is developing software that helps it find and identify objects with a bit more independence.

RUSS TEDRAKE: So, if the robot is just looking at my kitchen at home, there are dishes everywhere, and you ask the robot to find a spoon, that's a really hard question.

If the human just says 'there's a spoon, roughly, over here, click,' and he just has to look in a little patch of space for something that's roughly the same shape as a spoon, that takes an extremely hard problem of object recognition in a complicated environment, and turns it into a very simple problem of, 'Okay, I want to look for spoon-shaped things in this small region of space.'

NARRATOR: While CHIMP needs its human operators to tell it exactly where a valve is and where to grab it, M.I.T.'s Atlas is programmed to recognize a valve on its own, figure out the steps it needs to take as it approaches, then grab and turn it, with very little human help.

NARRATOR: While today's cutting-edge machines, like the thousands of drones used by the U.S. military, still have a human in the loop, what happens in the future, if they don't?

Most are funded through government or corporate sponsorship, but some bots, like this odd looking one, called Cogburn, are funded by the teams themselves.

NARRATOR: To win, each robot must perform a series of tasks, a lot like the ones they faced in the first challenge, from driving a car to drilling a hole in a wall, to walking over debris, to tackling a flight of stairs.

Sometimes the robots will receive a degraded signal, just bits and pieces of the data that tells them what to do, other times, no data, no instructions at all.

But what makes the final challenge downright nerve-wracking is that, unlike the first competition, where the bots were tethered, this time around there are no safety lines allowed, putting these multi-million dollar machines in real jeopardy.

After years of perfecting his walking software, a tiny misstep in the real world brought one of the most advanced robots on Earth to its knees.

When we went to get out of the car, we forgot to turn off the driving controller, so the foot tried to push the throttle, when it was getting out of the car.

NARRATOR: The robot is still able to do most of the tasks, but it faces one insurmountable problem: the team has programmed it to use two hands to pick up the drill and turn it on.

Finally, Hubo starts to climb the stairs, unlike any human on earth, with its head facing forward and its feet facing back.

But if we look back 10 years what we have, look back 20 years what we have, the world has been totally transformed.

A controversial charity-leadership group that has blanketed nonprofit workers nationwide with emails soliciting membership for its Board of Governors recently removed the list of governors from its website and suggested it would take legal action against The Chronicle if it published a saved version of the list.

From last July to the end of 2016, the group sent emails to thousands of people at nonprofits and other organizations telling them they had been nominated to serve as governors.

But several people who received the emails question that claim, saying they were quickly accepted with seemingly no vetting after responding to the organization&rsquo;s email.

The Chronicle saved a version of the list of governors as it appeared online on February 28 and is publishing it for those who would like to be removed from the list or are curious as to who is on it.

Mr. LaRose reacted angrily to The Chronicle&rsquo;s decision to publish the list, as did the organization&rsquo;s board chairman, Bishop Redfern II, presiding bishop of the Ecumenical Church of Christ Worldwide in Columbia, S.C.

H On March 30, The Chronicle published a story about the association that Mr. LaRose said resulted in harassing phone calls, emails, and social-media posts aimed at people affiliated with the group.

Eli Wallach

It was an education.'[8] Two years later he received a master of arts degree in education from the City College of New York.[9][10] He gained his first method acting experience at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in New York City, where he studied under Sanford Meisner.[11] There, according to Wallach, actors were forced to 'unlearn' all their physical and vocal mannerisms, while traditional stage etiquette and 'singsong' deliveries were 'utterly excised' from his classroom.[12] Wallach's education was cut short when he was drafted into the United States Army in January 1941.[3] He served as staff sergeant in a military hospital in Hawaii and later sent to Officer Candidate School (OCS) in Abilene, Texas to train as a medical administrative officer.

There, he studied more method acting technique with founding member Robert Lewis, and with other students including Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, Herbert Berghof, Sidney Lumet, and his soon-to-be wife, Anne Jackson.[14] Wallach became Marilyn Monroe's first new friend when she became a student at the Actors Studio, once insisting on watching him perform in The Teahouse of the August Moon from the backstage wings, simply to see up close how experienced actors perform a two-hour play.[15] She also became friends with his wife, Anne Jackson, also studying at the Studio, and would visit the couple at their home and sometimes babysit their new child.[16] In 1945 Wallach made his Broadway debut and he won a Tony Award in 1951 for his performance alongside Maureen Stapleton in the Tennessee Williams play The Rose Tattoo.[17] His other theater credits include Mister Roberts, The Teahouse of the August Moon, Camino Real, Major Barbara (in which director Charles Laughton discouraged Wallach's established method acting style),[17] Luv, and Staircase, co-starring Milo O'Shea, which was a serious depiction of an aging homosexual couple.

He also played a role in a tour of Antony and Cleopatra, produced by the actress Katharine Cornell in 1946.[18] He exposed Americans to the work of playwright Eugène Ionesco in plays like The Chairs and The Lesson in 1958, and in 1961 Rhinoceros opposite Zero Mostel.[17] He last starred on stage as the title character in Visiting Mr. Green.[19] The stage was where Wallach focused his early career.

You can't really do very much in movies or in television, but the stage is such an anarchistic medium.[3] He said that the stage was what attracted him most and what he 'needed' to do.[20] 'Acting is the most alive thing I can do, and the most joyous,' he stated.[3] Wallach and Jackson became one of the best-known acting couples in the American theater, as iconic as Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, and Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronyn,[17] and they looked for opportunities to work together.

we have a terrific working compatibility when we're in the same play, especially when the play means something important to us.'[3] When he did gravitate toward accepting parts in films, he did so to 'help pay the bills,' he said, adding, 'for actors, movies are a means to an end.'[21] Despite the fact that he eventually acted in over 90 films and almost as many television dramas,[22] he continued to accept stage parts throughout his career, often with Jackson.

Four years later, in 1988, they acted in a revival of Cafe Crown, a portrait of the Yiddish theatre scene during its prime.[21] They continued acting together as late as 2000, while he also took on roles alone throughout all those years.[21] Wallach's film debut was in Elia Kazan's controversial 1956 Baby Doll, for which he won the British Academy Film Awards (BAFTA) as 'Most Promising Newcomer.'[23] Baby Doll was controversial because of its underlying sexual theme.

The scene on the swing with Eli Wallach and Carroll Baker in Baby Doll is my exact idea of what eroticism in films should be.[25] Wallach went on to a prolific career as 'one of the greatest 'character actors' ever to appear on stage and screen,' notes Turner Classic Movies,[1] acting in over 90 films.[22] Having grown up on the 'mean streets' of an Italian American neighborhood,[26] and his versatility as a method actor, Wallach developed the ability to play a wide variety of different roles, although he tried to not get pinned down to any single type of character.

Times theater critic Charles McNulty saw Wallach's 'power to illuminate' his various screen or stage personas as being 'radioactive.'[26] The Guardian newspaper has written that 'Wallach was made for character acting,' and includes movie clips from some of his most memorable roles in a tribute to him.[28] In 1961, Wallach co-starred with Marilyn Monroe, Montgomery Clift and Clark Gable in The Misfits, Monroe's and Gable's last film before their deaths.

On November 13, 2010, at the age of 94, Wallach received an Academy Honorary Award for his contribution to the film industry from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.[36] A few years prior to that event, Kate Winslet told another audience that Wallach, with whom she acted in The Holiday in 2006,[37] was one of the 'most charismatic men' she'd met, and her 'very own sexiest man alive.'[27] Wallach's final performance was in the short film The Train (2015).

Michael Myers

After nearly 15 years of captivity, Myers broke out of the asylum and, for 23 years, hunts down the rest of his family to kill them.

The family resided in a two-story house at 45 Lampkin Lane in the suburban town of Haddonfield, Illinois.[2]By 1963, when Michael was six-years-old, he claimed to have suffered from bizarre, inexplicable nightmares and heard a 'voice' in his head that would tell him to do things.

He dreamed of a disfigured fifteen-year-old boy named Enda who, after being rejected by his true love Deirdre, brutally murdered her during the feast of Samhain, on what would later be called Halloween night.

Six-year-old Michael after killing his sister Judith On October 30th, 1978, Michael Myers destroyed his room at Smith's Grove and carved the word 'sister' on his door before breaking out.

As Michael rose to resume his attack on Laurie, only to get his mask yanked off and giving her a chance to see his face, Dr. Loomis appeared and shot him six times, causing him to fall off the balcony.

Michael in Halloween II after getting his eyes shot by Laurie Michael Myers is set on fire by Dr. Loomis at Haddonfield Memorial Michael Myers escapes incarceration once more to stalk his young niece Jamie Lloyd Jamie sees herself as the young Michael Myers Jamie holds her uncle's hand, and a kind of psychic connection is formed between them Michael shows a unlikely glimpse of humanity by agreeing to take off his mask for Jamie Michael stalking his niece in the attic of his old home on Halloween 1989 The residents of Haddonfield believed that Jamie and Michael died in the explosion at the police station in 1989.

Dr. Loomis continued to track Myers' possible movements until he passed away in the mid-nineties, while Laurie Strode faked her death in a car accident in case her brother ever came after her again.

Michael comes face-to-face with his thought-dead sister Laurie for the first time in twenty years Michael tracked Laurie—now known as Keri Tate—to Hillcrest Academy, a boarding school in Summer Glen, California where she worked as headmistress.

As Keri struggled with the twenty-year-old memories of her brother, and John grew increasingly impatient with her paranoia and over-protectiveness, Michael snuck into the school grounds and stalked his family on Halloween.

As the confused paramedic regained consciousness in the back of the van, Keri deliberately crashed the vehicle, sending them both crashing down a hill and trapping the man underneath the van.

She prepared to finish Michael Myers off once and for all, and after pausing momentarily when the masked man showed a glimpse of humanity, mercilessly chopped his head off with an axe.

Michael watches as Laurie falls to her death, his life's mission finally fulfilled After killing an innocent man, the guilt-stricken Keri Tate had been arrested and sent to Grace Andersen Sanitarium where she returned to be called Laurie.

In 2002, however, his childhood home was invaded by an entrepreneur named Freddie Harris, who planned to host an internet reality show in the legendary Myers house.

The show, entitled Dangertainment, involved a group of college students from Haddonfield University spending Halloween night, 2002, locked inside the house to look for answers as to what drove Michael Myers to murder.

He has been known to be able to lift a large tombstone out of the ground and carry it for long distances by hand, penetrate an adult human skull with his thumb easily, lift and hold aloft an adult human male with one arm effortlessly, and impale an adult human male through a solid wooden door with a blunt object, among other feats.

He can withstand critical injuries that would normally result in death, such as being shot and or stabbed multiple times in vital organs(brain and heart included), along with any other form of impalement, high voltage electrocution, or severe third degree burns over his body mass.

His superhuman abilities could be granted to him by the magical nature of the Curse of Thorn as the cult members assert that evil never dies, but this remains unconfirmed.